What does each state require for a data center tax exemption?

Almost every state that wants data centers offers the same basic deal: no sales tax on the equipment. What differs, enormously, is what a project has to do to earn it. The range runs from no minimum whatsoever to nearly half a billion dollars, and in five states the answer depends on which county you are standing in.

That number is not an abstraction for a landowner. It sets the smallest project that can economically be built in your state, and therefore the kind of party who might one day write to you.

Which states set a lower bar in a small county?

Five of them, and this is the most useful thing on this page if your land is rural, because the number usually quoted for a state is its metro number.

Georgia falls hardest. A project in a county above 50,000 people needs 250 million dollars and 25 new quality jobs. Between 30,001 and 50,000 it is 75 million and 10 jobs. At 30,000 people or fewer it is 25 million and 5 jobs. Those tiers apply to data centers certified on or after 9 May 2022, and the quality jobs have to pay at least 110 percent of the county average wage.

Kentucky does the same thing and almost nobody outside the state knows it. Since 2025 a county of 100,000 or more asks 450 million dollars, a county of 50,000 to 99,999 asks 100 million, and a county under 50,000 asks 25 million. Before 2025 the exemption applied to Jefferson County alone.

Wisconsin asks 50 million in a county of 50,000 or fewer, 100 million between 50,000 and 100,000, and 150 million above that.

Pennsylvania runs two steps: 75 million and 25 new jobs in a county of 250,000 or fewer, and 100 million and 45 jobs above it, with a million dollars a year in compensation to be maintained afterwards.

Virginia does it by distress rather than population. The standard bar is 150 million dollars and 50 jobs. In a locality with unemployment at least 150 percent of the state average, or in an enterprise zone, that falls to 70 million and 25 jobs.

What the rest of the states ask

No investment floor. Oklahoma gates its exemption on the nature of the business rather than the size of the check. There is no minimum to clear.

Under fifty million. Mississippi lowered its bar in 2019 to 20 million dollars and 20 jobs at 125 percent of the state average wage. Missouri asks 25 million dollars and 10 full-time operations jobs. Both are low enough that a single building qualifies.

Around a hundred million. Ohio asks 100 million over three years plus at least 1.5 million a year in compensation. Tennessee asks 100 million within three years and 15 jobs paying 150 percent of the state average occupational wage.

Two hundred million and up. Iowa asks 200 million within six years, with a floor space test rather than a job count. Louisiana asks 200 million and 50 permanent jobs. Kansas asks 250 million within five years and 20 jobs within two years of beginning operations.

Duration rather than a threshold. Indiana grants up to 25 years below 750 million dollars of investment and up to 50 years above it.

Closed or paused. Illinois stopped accepting new applicants on 1 July 2026 for two years, honouring agreements entered into before that date. New York paused review of incomplete discretionary environmental permit applications for data centers of 50 megawatts and above in July 2026, for one year, while the state develops a generic environmental impact statement.

Why the threshold decides who calls you

A tax threshold is a filter on project size, and project size is a filter on site size.

Where a state asks 250 million dollars, only the largest operators can realistically qualify, and those operators want very large sites with very large power. If you own eighty acres in Kansas, the exemption is not built with you in mind.

Where a state asks 20 or 25 million, a single building qualifies. That brings a whole tier of smaller parties into the market: regional operators, colocation providers, companies building for their own use. Those projects can work on ground that a hyperscaler would not look at twice.

Which is why the county tiers matter more than anything else here. A landowner in a Georgia county of 28,000 people, or a Kentucky county of 40,000, is looking at a 25 million dollar threshold rather than the figure that gets quoted in the press about their state. The number most people repeat is the metro number, and for our readers it is the wrong one.

This is the most useful thing on this page. It is not that a low threshold makes your land valuable. It is that a low threshold widens the set of people for whom your land could possibly work.

What the threshold does not do

None of this money reaches you. Not any of it, in any state. The exemption goes to the company building the facility.

It also does not put a transmission line near your property. Every state on this list has far more land that qualifies on paper than land that can actually be connected, and the electrical question decides the overwhelming majority of properties before tax treatment is ever discussed.

A common and understandable error is to read a generous state program as evidence that your ground is in demand. It is evidence about the state. Whether it says anything about your farm depends entirely on what runs near you.

The direction of travel

Worth noticing across the whole list: several states are tightening rather than loosening. Illinois has paused. New York has paused permitting. Georgia has seen repeated legislative attempts to curb its exemption, four of them in the 2026 session alone, none of which became law. Virginia’s general assembly spent 2026 arguing about conditions on its exemption. Texas has increased regulatory oversight of very large new loads. Ohio settled terms requiring large users to pay for the capacity they reserve.

The pattern is states asking harder questions about whether the deal is worth it, and about who bears the cost of the power. That is a reasonable thing for them to do, and it means anybody describing these programs as fixed and permanent is overstating their case.

What to do with this

If somebody writes to you about your land, ask what the qualifying threshold is in your state and whether their project clears it. A party genuinely working in that state knows the figure without looking it up, because it governs their entire model.

Then ask the question the threshold cannot answer: what transmission have they identified near your property, and what do they know about capacity on it.

We are a buyer, not a party finding a buyer. We use our own capital, nobody here earns a percentage of a transaction, and most of the ground we look at in any state does not work. The answer arrives either way, with the specific reason, which is worth having whoever writes to you next.